1950 Frazer Hardtop

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

Ironically, the "Frazer" part of Kaiser-Frazer was destined, at least initially, to be the newly born manufacturer's flagship lineup. Henry J. Kaiser was viewed as an industrial genius by mid-century, having built cargo ships on a mass-production basis to keep troops overseas fresh with vital supplies, and before that, taking on difficult dam-building projects with impunity. But building cars was a whole new name, so Kaiser recruited Joe Frazer, a prominent pre-war industry figure from Tennessee who'd held executive posts at Plymouth, Willys-Overland and Graham-Paige.

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Kaiser and Frazer's planning predated the end of World War II. When production got under way in earnest for the 1947 model year at the former Ford bomber factory at Willow Run, which sprawled over onetime farm fields near Ypsilanti, most of the design work had been handled by the individualistic Howard A. "Dutch" Darrin. From 1947 through 1950, Frazers used essentially the same bodywork as their Kaiser cousins. When the first Frazer hit the streets in late 1946, it was rightly cited as the first American car with true post-war styling. In 1949, two things with far-reaching consequences occurred: Both the Kaiser and Frazer lines got a significant facelifting, and Frazer, who had bickered frequently and loudly with Kaiser over basic management and financial principles (a huge post-war loan from the post-war Reconstruction Finance Corp. was needed to keep Kaiser-Frazer alive in 1949) left the company in frustration and disgust. By then, the first was well into its long slide toward oblivion.
The Frazer brand would survive only through 1951, the firm's advertising for 1950 ballyhooing the cars as nearly all new even though they were virtual carryovers from 1949. One of the cars, however, is this unique 1950 Frazer four-door hardtop owned by Ben Halko of Newark, Delaware: The sole example of this body type known to have been built as a Frazer, although Kaiser offered a Virginian four-door hardtop in 1949 and '50. Weighing 3,500 pounds and riding on a full perimeter frame, the flawlessly restored Frazer hardtop is powered by a 226-cu.in. L-head straight-six with 112hp.
The 1950 hardtop was purchased from a used-car lot in New Castle, Delaware, in 1957. Within two years, it had deteriorated to the point where it was no longer driveable and placed in storage, in this case an old truck trailer. In 1998, the Frazer hardtop emerged from the trailer for the first time in 38 years as Tom Zitkus, of TZ Restorations in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania, began to undertake the restoration that ended with the car finished in factory Glass Green. Halko is now the owner of the unquestionably best-and, by all indications, the only-1950 Frazer hardtop in the world.

This article originally appeared in the June, 2006 issue of Hemmings Motor News.